Vidula Shetye

Worth knowing

She has moved physical product through global factories and freight for consumer brands large and small, and she thinks hard about what happens after the sale: returns, reuse and keeping goods in circulation. If you are a Canadian hardware or consumer goods founder wrestling with manufacturing, landed cost or reverse logistics, she has solved the problem before.

Story

Vidula trained as an engineer at the University of Toronto, then spent fifteen years in operations for companies that make things: Canadian Tire, New Balance and The Coleman Company, where the work is forecasting, factories and freight. She moved into Canadian tech at ecobee, taking operations and supply chain through the growth of one of the country's best-known connected hardware products. At Aisle, formerly Lunapads, she applies that discipline to reusables, a category where circularity is the product rather than an afterthought, and she has taken the case for reverse logistics public on The ReCommerce Show.

Highlights

• Former VP, Operations and Supply Chain, ecobee
• Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award, University of Toronto, 2010
• Past president, Women in Science and Engineering, U of T
• Two-term president, Institute of Industrial Engineers student chapter, U of T